In voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls on platforms that provide a loopback signal, the signal level of the loopback signal can be observed to change quite drastically due to external playout effects introduced by an audio driver or hardware device, such as with effects directed to providing loudness enhancements, dynamic range compression, noise suppression, or speaker protection. These changes can be misclassified by audio signal activity detectors, which in turn leads to various forms of degradation in echo cancellation performance, such as incomplete echo cancellation and/or fading of near-end speech signals captured by a microphone.